'The Power Broker' by Robert Caro

18 December 2024

When we saw David Hare’s play ‘Straight Line Crazy’, about the legendary New York urban planner Robert Moses, a couple of years ago (reviewed here in April 2022) I suggested that the two main incidents dramatised in the play would have made brilliant episodes of the design podcast '99% Invisible’. So when I learned, in December 2023, that ‘99% Invisible’ was planning to spend the whole of 2024 running an extended ‘online book club’ to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ‘The Power Broker’ - Robert Caro's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Robert Moses - I was immediately on board. ‘The Power Broker’ is a monumental 1,300-page work which masterfully chronicles how Moses, never elected to public office, became one of New York's most influential figures. He transformed the state through ambitious park and highway projects, while his ruthless approaches to securing and maintaining power developed a horrific web of corruption, prejudice and racism. ‘The Power Broker’ is brilliantly written and meticulously researched: Robert Caro conducted 522 interviews with those with firsthand experience of the relevant events - including Moses himself - and took seven years to write the book. I have been reading roughly 100 pages each month, in time to listen to each of the 12 monthly podcast episodes reflecting on the relevant chapters and featuring guests including Pete Buttigieg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Incredibly Robert Caro, now aged 89, is still writing (trying to complete the fifth volume of his mammoth biography of Lyndon B Johnson) and it was fascinating to hear him interviewed on the podcast. As 2024 draws to a close, I feel a sense of accomplishment joining the select group who have read the whole of ‘The Power Broker’ and I'm struck by how its themes of power, urban planning, and social equity remain startlingly relevant today, 50 years after its publication. You can find more details about the 99% Invisible Breakdown of The Power Broker and listen to the podcasts at: https://99percentinvisible.org/club/

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

17 December 2024

For the past 25 years the Northampton Symphony Orchestra’s annual Christmas Cracker concert has, for me, marked the start of the festive season. This Sunday afternoon family-friendly event is always huge fun and this year’s concert, at the Spinney Theatre in Northampton last Sunday, attracted a large, enthusiastic audience. Alongside a few Christmas carols and Leroy Anderson’s ‘Sleigh Ride’ we always include a narrated piece. This year’s choice, Iain Farrington’s ‘The Scary Fairy Saves Christmas’ was new to most of us but incredibly enjoyable. The words, by Craig Charles, written in rhyming couplets, are dark, mischievous, witty, occasionally controversial and very funny - assembling a cast of goblins, elves, witches and dwarves to create a bleakly comic version of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’. Our performance, narrated by William Thallon, went extremely well, with conductor John Gibbons co-ordinating the complicated joins between music and narration in this long piece very effectively. The rest of the programme included ‘A Christmas Dance’ - Frank Bridge’s lovely interweaving of the folk dance ‘Sir Roger de Coverley’ (which is mentioned in Charles Dickens' ‘A Christmas Carol’) with ‘Auld Lang Syne’. And, following our recent performance of  JS Bach’s 'Toccata and Fugue' arranged by Stokowski, on Sunday we played another piece from 'Fantasia', ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ by Paul Dukas. This is a notoriously difficult piece (particularly as it is so well known) but I think our performance was very impressive, featuring brilliant performances by the bassoonists, Sian Bunker, Tim Hewitt, Heather Pretty and Frank Jordan. We always include some film music in the Christmas Cracker and this year we concluded the concert with selections from the ‘Harry Potter Children’s Suite’ by John Williams. This kept William Thallon busy as he both played the iconic celeste theme and read new verse introductions to each of the movements, written specially for the concert by Frank Jordan. The movements from the suite featured the different sections of the orchestra in turn (with excellent recorder playing by Graham Tear and Helen Taylor and dramatic violin solo by Richard Smith in ‘Diagon Alley’), before bringing us all together in ‘Harry’s Wondrous World’, introduced in Frank’s words:

So as the season casts its spell,
We wish you joy and hope as well.
May Christmas shine, bright and true,
With magic and wonder surrounding you.
Merry Magical Christmas!

The NSO Horns at Hogwarts

'The Proof of My Innocence' by Jonathan Coe

13 December 2024

Jonathan Coe is one of my favourite writers and I particularly enjoy his novels that set fictional events against the backdrop of recent British Politics - from the Thatcher Government of the 1980s (in 'What a Carve Up!') to New Labour (in 'The Closed Circle') to Cameron's Coalition Government (in 'Number 11’, reviewed here in January 2016) to Brexit (in 'Middle England', reviewed here in January 2019). His latest book, 'The Proof of My Innocence', which I have just finished reading (as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Sam Woolf, Alana Maria, Charlotte Worthing, Mark Stobbart and Roy McMillan) is set during Liz Truss's 49-day tenure as Prime Minister. While it does explore the Conservative Party's lurch to the right, 'The Proof of My Innocence' is also a murder mystery, with Coe parodying the current trend of 'cosy crime' novels (much like Kate Atkinson did in her recent Jackson Brodie novel 'Death at the Sign of the Rook', reviewed here in October 2024). But overall it's a novel about writing, where nothing is quite what it first seems (even the title has a double meaning). Much like David Lodge's 'Therapy' this is a novel where it pays to think about who is telling each section of the story. Like David Lodge, Jonathan Coe writes accessible, entertaining prose that is much cleverer than it first appears. 'The Proof of My Innocence' is not his funniest work but it is a very enjoyable and satisfying puzzle.

'Just Another Missing Person' by Gillian McAllister

13 December 2024

Gillian McAllister writes crime thrillers that are meticulously plotted and genuinely scary, with twists that repeatedly pull the ground out from underneath the reader. Having enjoyed her previous three books I have now finished her latest novel 'Just Another Missing Person'. This appears to be a fairly conventional tale of the police investigating the disappearance of a young woman, but it quickly becomes much more complicated. Each chapter is presented through the eyes of one of the main protagonists but we are never properly introduced to these narrators so we naturally make assumptions about their role in the story, misleading ourselves ahead of the inevitable plot twists. This is fiction you have to read squinting between your fingers at times but it is always gripping.

'Come From Away' by Irene Sankoff and David Hein

5 December 2024

On 11 September 2001, when US air space was closed following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, 38 transatlantic flights that were in the air en route to America were diverted to the airport in Gander, Newfoundland. This tiny Canadian town had a usefully large airfield because it was built as a refuelling stop in the days when planes couldn't make it from Europe to the States in one hop. Suddenly, on 9/11, the 9,000 inhabitants of Gander were faced with accommodating the unexpected arrival of 7,000 tired, confused and scared passengers who had not yet been told why their flights couldn't continue to the USA. In 2013 the remarkable story of the Newfoundlanders' hospitality became a very successful stage musical, 'Come From Away' with book, music and lyrics by Irene Sankoff and David Hein, and on Saturday we were at Milton Keynes Theatre to see it. 'Come From Away' is a lovely show - moving, poignant, funny and inspirational. It uses ensemble narration, with each member of the large cast stepping up in turn to tell us the story of those few incredible days, while constantly rearranging chairs to become passengers on an airplane or customers in a bar etc. The music - provided by a lively on-stage band - draws on the folk music of the Canadian maritime provinces with its Celtic influences. The musical doesn't shy away from the painful reality of the terrorist attacks but it's ultimately a celebration of humanity and the entire sold out audience of 1,400 people rose to their feet at the end in genuine warmth. Do go to see 'Come From Away' if you get the chance.

Mozart Requiem

28 November 2024

On Saturday we made a first visit to the Bristol Beacon concert hall to see a performance of Mozart’s Requiem with Bristol Ensemble. This was the culmination of Massive Mozart - a Bristol Beacon Community Programme project. 214 local singers had spent the day working with the choral conductor Jeremy Jackman. Their performance was very impressive: it was lovely to hear such a large chorus and the orchestra and soloists (Harriet Eyley, Samantha Price, Elgan Llyr Thomas and Benson Wilson) were all excellent.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

20 November 2024

Back in the summer, when I told a group of my friends who have rarely or never been to see me play in the Northampton Symphony Orchestra, that our next concert was going to include Holst's 'The Planets', they all immediately booked tickets, months in advance. And they were not the only ones who wanted to see this particularly popular piece of classical music: our performance sold out weeks ago and we amassed a waiting list of 80 people hoping for returns. On Saturday evening our packed audience, huge orchestra and women's chorus meant there wasn't a spare seat in Christchurch, Northampton. The first half of the concert started with Leopold Stokowski's arrangement of the 'Toccata and Fugue' by JS Bach - famously conducted by Stokowski alongside Mickey Mouse in 'Fantasia'. We then played the 'Four Last Songs' by Richard Strauss - one of my favourite pieces of music - with the excellent Northampton-based Irish soprano Alison Roddy (who sang Hamilton Harty’s setting of ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ with NSO last year, reviewed here in June 2023). Alison gave a stunning performance and the orchestra’s leader Richard Smith played the achingly beautiful violin solo in ‘Beim Schlafengehen’ wonderfully. I had previously played the 'Four Last Songs' with the City of Peterborough Symphony Orchestra (twice), Milton Keynes Sinfonia and Northampton Symphony Orchestra but Saturday was the first time I have played the first horn part with its gorgeous solo in 'September'. This was a nerve-racking and emotional moment for me as it brought back memories of the last time we played the 'Four Last Songs' with NSO in 2010 (reviewed here in November 2010) when the horn solo was played beautifully by David Lack in his first appearance with the orchestra for 18 months after treatment for cancer. Dave died in 2014 and is still fondly remembered and much missed. 'The Planets' by Gustav Holst is in the top ten most popular requests from BBC Radio 4’s ‘Your Desert Island Discs’. It's a piece many of us grew up knowing: my Mum and Dad had a LP of 'The Planets' which my brother and I used to play over and over when we were little. We last performed 'The Planets' with NSO at the Derngate in Northampton in 2011 (reviewed here in June 2011). Every performance feels like a very special occasion. The piece requires a vast orchestra (including two harps, two timpanists, organ and quadruple winds) plus a women's chorus whose ethereal wordless harmonies drift us off into outer space at the end of the final movement 'Neptune'. I thought our performance on Saturday went incredibly well. Conductor John Gibbons kept us from wallowing in the weightier moments, maintaining a brisk delicacy to many of the movements that demonstrated how well written and orchestrated this popular piece is. Getting to know 'The Planets' again over the past few months I can see its influence on so much of the best film music. This was the first time I have played the first horn part in 'The Planets' and I enjoyed playing the exposed solos at the beginning of 'Venus'. There were brilliant solos from across the orchestra (too many to mention them all but I was particularly impressed by Peter May's tenor tuba solo in 'Mars'). And the women from the Northampton Bach Choir provided a chillingly beautiful delicate moment to finish an amazing concert. We livestreamed our performance of 'The Planets' to give those who hadn't managed to get tickets a chance to see it and you can watch the recording at: https://www.youtube.com/live/hfZlcSSB1AQ?si=NhFFuVbqccyOFEzU (wind forwards to 21 mins).

Bellowhead

15 November 2024

On Sunday, almost exactly nine years since we saw the great folk big band Bellowhead at the Riverside Theatre in Aylesbury on their farewell tour (reviewed here in November 2015), we were back at the Riverside to see the glorious return of Bellowhead. Initially reunited for a one-off live online performance in 2020 (reviewed here in December 2020) Bellowhead are now touring again and it was wonderful to see them live once more. The band seemed to be having a ball and you could feel the warmth from an enthusiastic sold-out audience that was revelling in an opportunity they had not expected to come around again. Bellowhead paid tribute to their former colleague Paul Sartin who died of a heart attack in 2022, at the age of 51. But this was a joyous celebration of which he would have been proud. I think I had a smile on my face through the whole performance: this is life-affirming joyous music, performed with gusto, mischief and glee. Possibly the best gig I have ever been to. This fan video from their recent appearance in Nottingham gives a flavour of the atmosphere on this reunion tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiD6-yBYqwM

'Othello' by William Shakespeare

7 November 2024

On Saturday we were at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to see Tim Carroll’s new RSC production of ‘Othello’. After seeing Clint Dyer’s National Theatre production of ‘Othello’ set in a 1930s fascist state (reviewed here in March 2023) and Iqbal Khan’s RSC production in a contemporary setting with scenes of water-boarding and torture (reviewed here in June 2015), this was a much more conventional version of the play. Judith Bowden’s sparse set features a bare stage without furniture and simple but effective use of gauze curtains and beautiful Elizabethan costumes. This simplicity serves to focus all our attention on the acting, which is excellent throughout. The four principals are particularly strong: The English-American actor John Douglas Thompson plays Othello with an American accent, emphasising his role as the outsider; Will Keen is a quietly hissing Iago; Juliet Rylance’s Desdemona has a confident, cheerful positivity; and Anastasia Hille as Emilia visibly wears her guilt for the support she knows she should not have given Iago. James Oxley’s unaccompanied choral music (sung by the cast) provides a beautiful but sinister backdrop to the emerging tragedy.

Tom Robinson

1 November 2024

We are long-time fans of Tom Robinson (last reviewed here in January 2024) and last Friday we made a first visit to Club 85 in Hitchin to see the latest incarnation of the Tom Robinson Band playing songs from the albums ‘Power in the Darkness’ (1978) and ‘TRB Two’ (1979). As always Tom introduced in the support slot a young musician he has been championing on his BBC 6 Music radio show. Rob Green is a 19-year-old alt-soul/pop singer songwriter from Nottingham who writes lovely thoughtful songs and gave a very cheerful, confident performance. The Tom Robinson Band were in great form. You can see their encore performance of ‘War Baby’ featuring Tom, Lee Forsyth Griffiths and Rob Green at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzyR84nrPrI

Henry Normal and Nigel Planer

23 October 2023

I've been a fan of the poet/comedian Henry Normal for 30 years: I last saw him at the Ampthill Literary Festival in 2022 (reviewed here in April 2022). One of the first times I saw him was on our first ever visit to the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 1995 when he appeared alongside the comedian and actor Nigel Planer. This was a fascinating and memorable session in which Nigel Planer, who had been writing poetry since his teens, read some of his poems in public for the first time. He was incredibly nervous and Henry Normal was very supportive. So it was fascinating this week - almost 30 years later - to get to see Henry Normal and Nigel Planer on stage together again at The Stables in Wavendon. Nigel Planer has now published several books of poetry and a novel and was much more confident, his delivery showing his skill as an actor. After performing separately the two of them came together for a Q&A session which reflected on their careers across TV, film and radio and their memories of working with Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Linda Smith, Steve Coogan and others.

BBC Young Musician 2024

23 October 2024

I've followed the biennial BBC Young Musician competition closely since it started in 1978 and I have written here about it every two years since 2006. You can read all my previous posts about BBC Young Musician at: http://culturaldessert.blogspot.com/search/label/BBCYoungMusician. BBC Young Musician 2024, which came to its climax last weekend, saw some significant changes to the format, doing away with the instrumental categories that have defined the competition since it began. Rather than separating the contestants into strings, woodwind, brass, piano and percussion until the grand final, this year 50 young musicians were auditioned to select the 12 best players, regardless of instrument. Two quarter finals and a semi-final then reduced the field to 3 for the concerto final (broadcast on Sunday). I was surprised how well this radical change worked: it allowed the same three judges to oversee the entire competition (rather than having specialists for each of the instrument categories) and by broadcasting excerpts of all 50 auditions the television audience saw many more young musicians than in previous years and saw more of those who made it right through to the final, building our understanding of their personalities and musicality. But the lack of categories did seem to further favour string players and pianists (who were already the most common overall winners of the competition) - with no brass players or percussionists (and only two wind players) making it beyond the initial auditions. (Though I suppose you could argue that the category format may have previously prevented many more outstanding pianists or string players from getting to the concerto final.) The standard of contestants seemed even higher than in previous years, with many 'wow' moments throughout the various rounds. And I think Sunday's concerto final at Bristol Beacon was one of the best ever, in that I think all three finalists will go on to be well-known professional musicians - comparable with the 2016 final (which featured Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Ben Goldscheider and Jess Gillam - now firmly established as the perfect TV presenter for BBC Young Musician). But I did have some criticisms of the final. After the 2022 final restored the incredible spectacle of a concert consisting of five full concertos it was a great shame that we were restricted to three concertos again this year. And, by doing away with the instrumental categories, for the first time ever the final featured two musicians playing the same instrument. The fact that both pianists then chose to play the same concerto (Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto) was an amazing and fascinating twist but even further reduced the sense of the final as a concert. Comparing two very different performances of the same work was surprisingly compelling - and reminded me of the experience of playing the Rachmaninov 2nd Piano Concerto with the Northampton Symphony Orchestra in two consecutive concerts in 2019 with two different pianists who took contrasting approaches to the piece (reviewed here in October and November 2019). I was also disappointed that the concerto final was not broadcast live. Knowing that it had been recorded a few weeks ago made me paranoid about accidentally reading something online that would give away who won - making me feel like Bob and Terry in that episode of 'The Likely Lads' where they are desperately trying to avoid finding out the result of a football match so they can watch the highlights later without knowing. The insights into each movement of the concertos provided by BBC National Orchestra of Wales conductor Ben Gernon were really interesting and helpful but inserting these video clips between the movements in the broadcast ruined the atmosphere of the live performance. I was surprised by the dropping of the tradition of a performance at the end of the concerto final by the winner of the previous BBC Young Musician competition and the disappearance of the Walter Todds Bursary, previously awarded to a performer or performers who show great promise but do not reach the Final. But these are minor quibbles: the TV coverage continues to be beautifully put-together, entertaining, serious and respectful. And all three 2024 finalists - Ryan Wang, Shlomi Shahaf, and Jacky Zhang - gave thrilling performances, with Ryan Wang an outstanding winner.

'The New Real' by David Edgar

23 October 2024

On Saturday we were at The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon to see the Royal Shakespeare Company/Headlong production of 'The New Real' - a new play by David Edgar, directed by Holly Race Roughan. This reminded me a lot of David Edgar's 'Playing With Fire' which we saw at the National Theatre in 2005 (starring Emma Fielding and David Troughton - reviewed here in October 2005). In that play a New Labour high-flyer is sent north from London to sort out an ailing local authority with disastrous results. 'The New Real' uses a similar device, but on a global scale. The demise of communism in Eastern Europe, following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, led to many newly independent nascent democracies seeking the expertise of America and the West to develop their electoral processes. David Edgar's dark satire shows how this may have inadvertently instigated the wave of populism in Eastern Europe that then swept West to the UK and USA. In 'The New Real' two American political strategists (played by Martina Laird and Lloyd Owen), who have worked together successfully on US election campaigns, end up advising rival candidates in the presidential election in a fictional former Soviet state, resorting to increasingly underhand tactics to avoid losing their personal battle with each other. Caught in the middle of this feud is their British pollster Caro Wheeler (the excellent Jodie McNee) - who provides the moral conscience. The play is a fascinating thought-piece, though sometimes hindered as a drama by a George Bernard Shaw-like tendency to have the characters engage in long, rigorous, debates of ideas that feel like essays rather than dialogue. Nonetheless it was enjoyable, thought-provoking and very well acted.

Adderbury Ensemble concert

23 October 2024

Regular readers may have noticed that I don’t go to a lot of chamber music concerts: I’m not sure why, because those few occasions I have been persuaded to attend have always been really enjoyable. And the fact that I first wrote these exact words here in November 2009 (after attending a performance in Bedford by the Galliard Ensemble), and haven't featured much chamber music here since, rather reinforces the point. Last Friday we were at the Radcliffe Centre in Buckingham for a string quartet recital by the Adderbury Ensemble from North Oxfordshire. It was a lovely concert, featuring quartets by Haydn and Shostakovich and the original string quartet version of the 'Simple Symphony' by Benjamin Britten. The Adderbury Ensemble finished the performance with a couple of arrangements by the Danish String Quartet of traditional Scandinavian songs and dance tunes (from the excellent album 'Wood Works').

'Death at the Sign of the Rook' by Kate Atkinson

17 October 2024

It's been five years since Kate Atkinson's last Jackson Brodie novel ('Big Sky', reviewed here in July 2019) and I had forgotten how brilliantly entertaining these light-touch crime stories are. 'Death at the Sign of the Rook', the sixth novel in the Jackson Brodie series (which I've just finished reading as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Jason Isaacs) is a mischievously metatextual homage to the classic country house murder mystery. Kate Atkinson effectively inserts Jackson Brodie into an Agatha Christie plot, complete with a dowager marchioness, a local vicar and a butler. Brodie finds himself a participant in a murder mystery game being staged in the present day in a stately home - but it feels like he has stepped back in time to the age of a very different kind of detective. It's an incredibly enjoyable comic novel in which even the most clichéd characters are carefully and believably drawn. And Kate Atkinson's usual technique of alternating points of view to build a plot which none of the participants fully understand proves particularly entertaining and effective. Although there are references to the earlier books in the series 'Death at the Sign of the Rook' is a self-contained story which would be enjoyable whether or not you have read the other Jackson Brodie novels.

'Tom Lake' by Ann Patchett

17 October 2024

I’ve never seen Thornton Wilder’s play ‘Our Town’ but I was aware of its ubiquitous status among repertory and community theatre groups across the USA. Ann Patchett’s latest novel ‘Tom Lake’ focuses on a production of ‘Our Town’ in which the actors seem increasingly confused with their characters. I was looking forward to ‘Tom Lake’, having enjoyed Patchett’s earlier books 'Bel Canto' (reviewed here in December 2023), 'State of Wonder' (reviewed here in January 2024) and ‘Run’ (reviewed here in June 2024). Not content with its allusions to ‘Our Town’, ‘Tom Lake’ features three sisters marooned with their parents, during the Covid-19 pandemic, in the family cherry orchard - creating a number of Chekhovian references. Ann Patchett uses lockdown as the excuse for a clever narrative structure in which Lara is finally telling her grown-up daughters the full story of her brief acting career and her relationship with a man who would go on to become a famous movie star. All of this happened before Lara married the girls’ father but, as in any family, the children have probably been told some of the story at an age when they didn’t fully understand or remember it. Their enforced family time during lockdown finally provides the opportunity to unpick the details of their mother’s youth - or as much as she decides to reveal to them. It’s a beautifully written and meticulously constructed novel, with its revelations carefully timed.

Tuscany

17 October 2024

We had a wonderful holiday in Tuscany last week, visiting Florence, San Gimignano, Volterra, Siena and Lucca. In Florence we visited the Uffizi Gallery and the Bargello Museum, immersing ourselves in works from Giotto to the Renaissance giants Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. Bizarrely, by contrast, in Volterra we came across an excellent exhibition of works by Banksy ('Realismo Capitalista'), at the Centro Studi Espositivo, which was really interesting. We loved the Tuscan hill towns of San Gimignano and Volterra - imposing small walled cities, with high buildings lining both sides of the paved pedestrianised roads within the city walls. San Gimignano is known as the Medieval Manhattan for its amazing skyline of high towers. The main square in Siena - Piazza del Campo - is a stunning sight: the setting for the annual Palio di Siena horse race is a huge, sloping expanse of paved tiles in diagonal slices fanning out from the Palazzo Publicco (city hall) towards a crescent of high balconied buildings. And in Lucca we walked right around the city walls - really a large fortified grassy mound rather than a wall, with a broad tarmac road along the top, encased by pretty avenues of plane trees. It was a lovely sunny autumnal day with the leaves drifting down onto the walls and lots of people walking or cycling around the perimeter of the old town.

'Empire' podcast: 'America: The Empire of Liberty'

3 October 2024

After a bit of a break, I've recently returned to listening to the excellent Empire podcast hosted by Anita Anand and William Dalrymple (originally reviewed here in January 2023). In particular, I've been listening to the series about America, which started with episode 148 (May 2024). The episodes on the Founding Fathers, George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin et al. and the American Revolution were very engaging, connecting me back to the excellent 2008 TV miniseries 'John Adams' starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney.

But it's the exploration of the Native American populations that covered the continent prior to the arrival of the Europeans in the 1500s that have been truly fascinating. Before European contact, Native American cultures in North America were highly diverse. I hadn't realised their degree of urbanisation. Around the year 1000 CE, Cahokia in present-day Illinois was a central city with a population of over 10,000 people. Part of a larger civilisation that included many satellite cities, Cahokia's central plaza was the size of 30 football fields, surrounded by large flat-topped pyramids used for religious and political purposes. Similar large-scale urban centres existed throughout North America, challenging the traditional narrative of Native Americans living solely in small scattered settlements. Francis Spufford's novel ‘Cahokia Jazz’ (reviewed here in February 2024) constructs a parallel universe in which the city of Cahokia is still going strong in the 1920s, dominated by a First Nations people who are led by a hereditary monarchy and have embraced a version of European Catholicism. In reality many of these Native American cities were abandoned by the 1500s, with populations living in more spread-out communities.

Contrary to the common portrayal of Native Americans as one monolithic group, there were hundreds of distinct nations across North America, each with its own customs, languages, political structures and territories. The notion of an empty continent ripe for the taking by the Europeans is now completely refuted. And the treatment of Native Americans by the United States government was often brutal and genocidal. The Indian Removal Act of 1830, which forced the relocation of tribes along the 'Trail of Tears', dispossessed Native Americans of their lands through horrific extermination campaigns including the use of poison. Chillingly, this policy of Indian removal in the 19th century influenced ethnic cleansing in other parts of the world, from Russia to German South West Africa to Nazi Germany. Russian officers in the Caucasus region in the 1840s saw the forced expulsion of Native Americans as a model for their own treatment of the Circassian people, one governor reportedly telling an American visitor that "Circassians are just like your American Indians" shortly before Russia deported 500,000 people. Even Adolf Hitler drew upon the American example when justifying the Nazi conquest of Eastern Europe, equating indigenous inhabitants with Indians and declaring that the Volga River would be their Mississippi, echoing the displacement of Native Americans from their lands.

The podcast format is very engaging, particularly the episodes with a guest historian, an expert in the relevant topic, to be quizzed by the hosts. I especially enjoyed the episode with Kathleen Duval discussing her book ‘Native Nations, a Millennium in North America’. The Empire podcast continues to be a rich source of fascinating, vibrant and relevant history, making me want to rush off and read all the books on the topic that they mention. All episodes of ‘Empire’ are available to download at: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/empire/id1639561921

Bagedai

27 September 2024

Bagedai are a band from the Chinese province of Yunnan who blend traditional Wa music with reggae, creating accessible but intriguingly different rock music featuring five powerful female singers backed by electric guitars and drums alongside traditional Chinese instruments. Their self-titled debut album manages to sound both surprising and familiar - eerie and upbeat. Listen at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nSEgjqTSv6xIZ6KNJDhj__gojqlAeU2CE 

Charles Ives' 150th anniversary

20 September 2024

Having spent most of my working life in endless discussions about the value, relevance and definitions of ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’, I have long had a soft spot for the composer Charles Ives. Ives (1874-1954) was a symphonist, a prolific writer of songs and an innovative modernist whose departure from traditional tonal harmony echoed his contemporary Arnold Schoenberg. Ives’ works also managed to incorporate elements of American folk music, jazz, and marching band music. He is now regarded as the most important American composer of his generation - admired by Gustav Mahler and championed by Leonard Bernstein. But Charles Ives was most definitely an amateur composer, continuing his day job as an insurance broker while composing at the weekends - not for financial necessity but because he was very good at insurance brokering and chose to keep music as his hobby. As we approach Ives’ 150th anniversary (on 20 October) I have been reading a lot about him and listening again to his symphonies (I would recommend Gustavo Dudamel’s 2020 recording of the Complete Symphonies with the Los Angeles Philharmonic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbmjAg00BzE&list=PLEhQ5Ooc2lLrR9KGN26CYBwF0fz_fACld). And this episode of BBC Radio 3’s ‘The Listening Service’ from June 2023 provides a great introduction to ‘All American Ives’: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001n25z 

‘Come As You Really Are’ by Hetain Patel

13 September 2024

This week I visited ‘Come As You Really Are’, Hetain Patel's exhibition as part of the ArtAngel project ‘The Hobby Cave’, in which Creative Lives is a partner. Located in Grant's, a former department store in Croydon, this celebration of the nation's hobbies is a miraculous treasure trove of the bizarre, inspiring, heart-warming, nostalgic and peculiar. Although there's plenty of craft and art on display, the exhibition seems dominated by collections, exploring the creative act of curation, from a case containing Kit Kat branded merchandise to a full wall display of vintage plastic carrier bags to a slightly creepy small room packed with My Little Pony toys. 

 

This is a strange and wondrous array of how people choose to spend their spare time and their creative energy. The exhibition is beautifully displayed and arranged. It makes you feel like you're following a weird treasure-hunt trail through a darkened forest or exploring Willy Wonka's abandoned chocolate factory. Indeed, there's one glass case full of pebbles painted to resemble classic chocolate bars. 

It's an exhibition you could return to many times: there are so many tiny hidden delights in each corner. But it's a very idiosyncratic, slightly unnerving experience, like walking through somebody else's dream. Hetain Patel is remarkably respectful, and clearly enthralled by, the pieces contributed by people from across the UK, never ridiculing or mocking and presenting every endeavour with equal prominence. It was great to see so many people wandering around the free exhibition. Everyone we spoke to thought it was wonderful: it was all smiles and gasps of excitement. ‘Come As You Really Are’ is a unique and amazing experience, hard to do justice to in words. Bizarre, impressive, life-affirming and joyous. The exhibition is in Croydon until 20 October and you can book free tickets at: https://artangel.org.uk/project/come-as-you-really-are/

 

'Hello Dolly' by Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart

13 September 2024

Last Saturday we were at the London Palladium to see ‘Hello Dolly’ starring Imelda Staunton. Jerry Herman’s 1964 musical is one I'm not at all familiar with: I had not previously seen it, nor the 1969 film with Barbara Streisand. And I think the only song I knew was the title track. It's a really enjoyable old-fashioned screwball comedy musical, genuinely funny and a great showpiece with a brilliant headlining role for the eponymous matchmaker. Based on Thornton Wilder's 1938 farce ‘The Merchant of Yonkers’ (later revised by Wilder as ‘The Matchmaker’, it tells the story of a New York widow Dolly Levi who mischievously engineers unions between unsuspecting eligible suitors while beginning to look for a later-in-life profitable union for herself. This production, directed by Dominic Cooke, who also directed Imelda Staunton in the great National Theatre production of Follies, reviewed here in November 2017), is a joyous celebration of song and dance on the big Palladium stage. Rae Smith’s set, featuring a moving sidewalk along which the characters process, as well as full-size trolleybuses and trains, is lots of fun. There is a large cast and brilliant choreography by Bill Deamer. Andy Nyman is great as the grumpy businessman at the heart of the matchmaking intrigue, and Jenna Russell, Tyrone Huntley and Harry Hepple also impress with Emily Langham stealing most of her scenes with her comically miserable sobbing. But this is Imelda Staunton's show and she is magnificent. Her rapturous reception and genuine standing ovation showed a true warmth from the packed audience for the musical leading lady who can't put a foot wrong.

'Sunrise Orchestral Suite' by Ida Moberg

6 September 2024

This week I've been very much enjoying listening to the music of Ida Moberg, a Finnish composer (1859-1947), who was a direct contemporary of Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), but was a new discovery for me. Like many female composers of the period her music remains largely unknown and underappreciated. Moberg studied composition at the Orchestra School of the Helsinki Philharmonic Society where her teachers included Sibelius. She became particularly interested in understanding music through movement. I've been listening to her 'Sunrise Orchestral Suite', a beautiful four-movement piece which builds from the gentle strings of the sunrise, through the activity of the day, to the evening and finishing in stillness. You can listen to the lovely 'Sunrise Orchestral Suite' at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-8xrak2p_E&list=OLAK5uy_nuS5_Y-zZpC_WQmLnBO01zuhvY-hj-6k8&index=5 

Edinburgh Festivals 2024

29 August 2024

Our visit to the Edinburgh Festivals last week was the 30th anniversary of our first trip there in 1994. We haven't been every year but I think we've now done the festivals at least 20 times. As always, our 2024 visit was brilliant and exhausting: we saw 22 shows in four and a half days in a total of 17 different venues. In the Edinburgh International Festival we were at the Usher Hall to see the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra (who we last saw in Edinburgh in 2016, reviewed here in September 2016) conducted by Thierry Fischer, playing the Alpine Symphony by Richard Strauss. This was the first time I've seen a performance of the symphony since I played it with the Northampton Symphony Orchestra in 2019 (reviewed here in June 2019). We also went to the opening night of 'Assembly Hall' at the Festival Theatre - an intriguing mixture of drama and dance performed by the Kidd Pivot company, directed and choreographed by Crystal Pite and written by Jonathon Young. 'Assembly Hall' shows a group of medieval battle re-enactors gathering for their Annual General Meeting in a crumbling community hall. As the group start to argue about whether to disband or continue, the argument morphs into a vicious battle, complete with swords and armour. It's a peculiar, beautiful, funny and puzzling piece of theatre, with the dancers syncing exaggerated movement to the recorded dialogue to indicate which character is speaking. Crystal Pite uses the dancers to create some stunning tableaux and mesmerising effects but we found it difficult to completely follow what was going on. We really enjoyed another chance to see the philosopher Julian Baggini at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, this time speaking about his new book 'How the World Eats: A Global Food Philosophy'. In the Edinburgh Festival Fringe our favourite shows included 'Nation' written and performed by Sam Ward - a clever and disturbing tale about a town gripped by fear and hatred, which reminded us of the unsettling theatre made by Tim Crouch (such as 'The Author', reviewed here in September 2010). We also loved 'Same Team' by Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse at the Traverse Theatre - a funny, moving and inspiring play about a women's football team from Scotland playing in the Homeless World Cup which was told by five actors in a style reminiscent of John Godber's plays for the Hull Truck Theatre company (such as 'Teechers', reviewed here in September 2010). And once again I am grateful to Kelly for her brilliant Fringe recommendations which included the wonderful 'Sawdust Symphony' a bizarre but strangely beautiful circus piece from Germany that was essentially live woodwork - the sort of thing you could only see at the Edinburgh Fringe. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uThKVDvZqCY

'Pericles' by William Shakespeare

15 August 2024

It is 16 years since we saw 'Pericles Redux' at the Edinburgh Fringe - an amazing production of Shakespeare's play by physical theatre ensemble Not Man Apart (reviewed here in August 2008) but I still fondly remember that performance. And until last weekend that was the only time I had seen this rarely performed play. On Saturday we were at the Swan Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon to see Tamara Harvey’s new RSC production of ‘Pericles’. ‘Pericles’ is Shakespeare doing Homer, an epic story set in ancient Greece involving numerous sea voyages and almost as many shipwrecks. It’s not a great play: much of the opening two acts feel more like a series of tableaus with a narrator. But I hadn’t realised it is widely believed that ‘Pericles’ was co-written with George Wilkins and that it seems he wrote the opening parts. The second half of the play certainly felt more Shakespearean and built towards a moving ending. The RSC production was very impressive, with Alfred Enoch as Pericles and Rachelle Doedericks as Marina standing out. And Christian Patterson was very funny as Simonides (played with more than a hint of Brian Blessed).

‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’ by Kate Trefry

9 August 2024

When it launched in 2016 ‘Stranger Things’ - the Duffer Brothers’ homage to 1980s sci-fi/horror films - was the first big breakout hit made by the Netflix streaming platform. I loved ‘Stranger Things’ (reviewed here in August 2016 and November 2017) so I was excited to learn that the new stage version of the show was to premiere in London’s West End. Last Saturday we were at the Phoenix Theatre to see ‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’ written by Kate Trefry from an original story by the Duffer Brothers, Jack Thorne and Kate Trefry, directed by Stephen Daldry. When it opened last year the play got a glowing 5-star review in The Guardian but only 2-stars in The Times: I felt it sat somewhere between these extremes. It is certainly a spectacular theatrical experience which starts with a stunning opening scene set on a US Navy ship in 1943, showing off the amazing set design by Miriam Buether, lighting by Jon Clark, (deafening) sound by Paul Arditti and visual effects by Jamie Harrison, Chris Fisher and 59 Productions. After this prologue the action of the play is set in 1959, acting as a prequel to the TV series and featuring some of the adult characters in the original (including Joyce and Hopper) as teenagers. Deciding to base the stage version around the preparations for a high school drama production was a nice idea but ended up feeling like a distraction from the main plot. And focusing purely on teenage characters lost some of the charm and humour of the gang of younger children who were the main protagonists of the TV series. Like the later episodes of season 4 ‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’ was incredibly long (more than 3 hours) and very loud. The stage effects were jaw dropping but tended to squeeze out the plot and acting. This is definitely a show for existing fans: it was noticeable that the biggest cheer from the audience was for the first appearance of the ‘Stranger Things’ theme tune and credit sequence.

WOMAD 2024

31 July 2024

The 2024 WOMAD Festival, at Charlton Park near Malmesbury in Wiltshire, took place over a gloriously sunny weekend. I saw 17 full performances and sampled many more, seeing artists from countries including Brazil, Bulgaria, India, Mongolia, Morocco, Taiwan, Tanzania and Tibet. 

It was fascinating to see the Bhutan Balladeers at the Taste the World Stage, demonstrating how to cook a traditional Bhutanese curry (containing a massive bowl of chillies which they told us was half the amount they would normally use!) while singing traditional religious songs written in a language that nobody in Bhutan now speaks. None of the members of the band had ever been out of Bhutan before (and had never previously been on a plane) but they were wonderful ambassadors for this small, remote Himalayan country which has a population of around 800,000. 

I was intrigued to see Sangjaru, a trio from South Korea who claimed to stitch together the swing of gypsy jazz with the folk traditions of their Korean homeland. They turned out to be even more eccentric than their description suggested, and great fun - though a little less gipsy jazz than I had hoped. 

The Pankisi Ensemble are Cechens from Eastern Georgia - four women singing in achingly beautiful scrunchy harmonies. They were clearly more used to formal recitals than outdoor festivals but the rapturous reception they received from a packed crowd seemed to relax them and they began to smile and even offered an occasional dance move. 

I really enjoyed Saigon Soul Revival, from Vietnam, and their very cool take on 60s psychedelia. But my favourite moment of this year's WOMAD was the performance by Duo Ruut - two Estonian women who have invented a completely new way to play the traditional Estonian plucked zither. Rather than sitting with the zither on the lap, the two of them stand facing each other across the instrument (on a high stand) and jointly pluck, bow and strum the single instrument (a bit like a four-handed piano piece) while singing into microphones placed above the zither. They perform their own, beautiful contemporary compositions. And, much like the Estonian zombie-folk duo Puuluup, who I saw at last year's WOMAD Festival (reviewed here in August 2023) Duo Ruut's patter between the songs was genuinely hilarious - and reinforced the idea that the only thing Estonians sing about is the weather! Fortunately WOMAD 2024 had near perfect weather.

You can see a selection of my photos from WOMAD 2024 at: https://culturaloutlook.blogspot.com/search/label/WOMAD2024

London Athletics Meet 2024

25 July 2024

On Saturday we were back at the London Stadium in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London for the Diamond League London Athletics Meet. We were part of a crowd of 60,000 watching some of the top athletes in the world in their final warm-up for the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. As at last year’s London Athletics Meet (reviewed here in July 2023), the stand-out performance was Femke Bol of the Netherlands in the Women's 400m Hurdles who looks on course both to win the Olympic title and to break the world record. Among the British Olympic hopefuls, Keely Hodgkinson ran the fastest 800m time since Caster Semenya in 2018, with Jemma Reekie and Georgia Bell making a British 1-2-3. And Matthew Hudson-Smith beat his own European 400m record to move to the top of the world rankings. It’s going to be interesting to watch them all compete in Paris.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

19 July 2024

The Northampton Symphony Orchestra Friends Concert is always a lovely end-of-season party. Last Sunday the NSO gave Callie Rich, Callie Scully, Ian Jones and me the opportunity to reprise our performance of the 'Konzertstück for four Horns' by Heinrich Hübler which we first played with the orchestra in our concert in Grantham last year (reviewed here in November 2023). It’s a fun piece and we really enjoyed ourselves. The concert also featured a brilliant young flute soloist from Northamptonshire Music and Performing Arts trust playing the first movement of the ‘Flute Concerto’ by Carl Nielsen - a fiendishly difficult piece beautifully performed, which also included impressive solos by Kate Bradshaw on bass trombone and Christine Kelk on clarinet. We opened the concert with ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ Overture by Otto Nicolai and also played the Intermezzo from 'Fennimore And Gerda' by Frederick Delius which featured lovely solos from Helen Taylor (flute) and Harriet Brown (oboe). We finished with Hamish MacCunn’s ‘The Land of the Mountain and the Flood’ concert overture. It was a very enjoyable concert and a lovely way to say thank you to the Friends of the Orchestra at the end of our 2023-24 season.

Wimbledon 2024

19 July 2024

In 2006 we saw 35 minutes of Kim Clijsters’ opening match on Number One Court at Wimbledon before spending 5 hours sheltering from the rain (reviewed here in June 2006). So last Saturday felt like long-awaited closure as we returned to Number One Court (with the retractable roof remaining open) to see Kim Clijsters win her match in the Ladies Invitation Doubles, playing with Martina Hingis against Sam Stosur and Cara Black. We had seen Martina Hingis playing in the Invitation draw in 2011, when she was barely old enough to be considered a senior player (reviewed here in June 2011) and it was lovely to see her still going strong 13 years later. We were also treated to a brilliantly entertaining Mens Invitation Doubles match between Bob and Mike Bryan & James Blake and Bruno Soares. We had previously seen the Bryan brothers win two of their Wimbledon Men's Doubles titles (reviewed here in July 2009 and July 2013) and, in retirement, they are still a formidable partnership. But this was a much less serious match, with some great clowning by all four players, all the more funny because of the incredible power and speed they brought to the trick shots and endless rapid-fire rallies at the net.

‘Sense and Sensibility’ by Jane Austen, adapted by Frances Poet

19 July 2024

When we took our seats at the outdoor Roman Theatre of Verulamium in St Albans the Saturday before last we were hopeful that we had avoided the predicted showers. But just before the show was due to start the sky darkened and an incredibly loud rumble of thunder was followed by a brief but torrential downpour. And, because of the potential dangers from an electrical storm, the performance was then delayed by 20 minutes while we sat in our wet clothes! Fortunately that was the worst of the rain and we were then able to enjoy the joint Pitlochry Festival Theatre and OVO Theatre production of ‘Sense and Sensibility’ by Jane Austen, adapted by Frances Poet. Like previous OVO productions we have seen at Verulamium (such as 'Much Ado About Nothing', reviewed here in July 2023 and 'The Importance of Being Earnest', reviewed here in July 2022) the scenes were interspersed with versions of modern pop songs - here sung in impressive harmony by the cast. But in ‘Sense and Sensibility’ this quirky insertion of songs by Beyoncé, Olivia Rodrigo and Sophie Ellis-Bextor felt out of keeping with what was otherwise a fairly straight, well-acted, period dramatisation. Nevertheless it was an enjoyable performance with Kirsty Findlay and Lola Aluko impressing as the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

2 July 2024

For a horn player, the chance to play one of the symphonies of Anton Bruckner is a rare treat. During my time as a member of the Northampton Symphony Orchestra I’ve now been lucky enough to play the first horn part in three Bruckner symphonies: No 6 (reviewed here in March 2015), No 4 (reviewed here in February 2020) and No 7 which we performed at St Matthew's Church in Northampton last Saturday. Bruckner’s 7th symphony requires at least 8 horn players rather than the usual 4: for our performance there were 10 of us, including 3 former NSO members and 2 friends from Milton Keynes Sinfonia. Four of my colleagues played the Wagner tubas which feature in the wondrous slow movement and the dramatic finale. Their beautiful second movement quartet was particularly splendid, with Ian Jones’ melody gently soaring above the gorgeous harmonies. Bruckner 7 is a big work, comprising more than an hour of abstract orchestral music with no story to guide the listener through it. But it’s not difficult to listen to if you immerse yourself in it. As with all Bruckner’s symphonies there is beauty, glory and brilliance, tempered by humility and moments of unexpected gentleness. NSO conductor John Gibbons cleverly shaped our performance, resisting the temptation to over-romanticise by pulling the tempos about (as many recordings of the symphony do) and maintaining a steady pulsing momentum that let the music’s emotions reveal themselves. John managed to draw a stunning performance of this mammoth, challenging piece from the orchestra, with the endings of each of the four movements creating magical moments of breath-holding silence. The NSO as a whole seemed to rise to the challenge - even those players who are not such Bruckner fans - but, as I said after both of my previous experiences of playing Bruckner symphonies with NSO, mostly it was about the horns!

The NSO horn section for Bruckner Symphony No 7

 

The concert opened with Alexander Borodin’s ‘Prince Igor Overture’ which features some of the same tunes as the better-known ‘Polovtsian Dances’ and included a brilliant clarinet solo by Naomi Muller and a lovely horn solo by Ian Jones.

We also played Amy Beach’s ‘Piano Concerto’ with the amazing young pianist Julian Chan. The concerto, which was premiered in 1900 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra with the composer as the soloist, was the first piano concerto written by an American woman. It’s a big, dramatic, romantic piece in four movements that deserves to be much better-known. Julian Chan, who joined us last year to play Saint-Saens’ ‘Piano Concerto No 5’ (reviewed here in February 2023) learned the Amy Beach concerto specifically for our concert but gave the impression it had been in his repertoire for years. The lush sprawling piano chords of the lengthy first movement, the gentle clockwork perpetuum mobile piano notes throughout the second movement and the Chopinesque playfulness of the fourth movement were all brilliantly executed. It’s a lovely concerto - and it was a wonderful concert to mark the end of Emily Groom’s tenure as the orchestra’s leader.

Emily joined NSO in 2021, leading the orchestra in our first concert following the Covid-19 lockdowns in October 2021. Her many contributions to our concerts have included beautiful violin solos in 'Symphony No 9' by Ralph Vaughan Williams (reviewed here in October 2022), Rimsky Korsakov’s ‘Scheherazade’ (reviewed here in February 2023) and Beethoven’s ‘Romance for violin and orchestra No. 2 in F major’ (reviewed here in July 2023). Many thanks Emily and all best wishes for the future.

'That Night' by Gillian McAllister

27 June 2024

I discovered the thriller writer Gillian McAllister in 2022 and really enjoyed her novels ‘Wrong Place Wrong Time’ (reviewed here July 2022) and ‘How to Disappear’ (reviewed here in January 2023). I have just finished reading her 2021 book ‘That Night’ which is another clever, twisty, tense, family thriller. This time Gillian McAllister challenges us to ponder how we would respond if a beloved sibling needed our help to cover up a crime. Like Tom Wolfe’s ‘The Bonfire of the Vanities’ this is one of those stories where one mistake mushrooms, as each small act to try to rectify the situation makes it exponentially worse. And each lie told requires more lies to back it up, to the point that it is hard to remember what is real. ‘That Night’ is a cleverly constructed novel that plays tricks with the reader as it recounts events through the point of view of different family members, alternating timelines between ‘then’ (the initial crime and its aftermath) and ‘now’. There are some bold twists, carefully disguised. And Gillian McAllister is brilliant at making you both scared to keep reading but unable to put the book down.

Rothesay Classic Birmingham Tennis

27 June 2024

On Saturday we were back at the Priory Club in Edgbaston, Birmingham, for the first time since our 2017 visit (reviewed here in June 2017) to see the semi-finals of the Rothesay Classic Birmingham Tennis Tournament. Compared to Queen’s Club in London (where we were the previous week), Edgbaston has a more intimate atmosphere and we were much closer to the action. It was a lovely sunny day and, although all four matches we saw were decided in straight sets, they were all more competitive than this suggests. The two ladies singles semi-finals saw Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan defeat the Italian Eilsabetta Cocciaretto, and Ajla Tomljanović of Australia beat Anastasia Potapova in a close-fought tussle. The ladies doubles semi-finals were both very entertaining. Eventual champions Belgian Elise Mertens and Su-Wei Hsieh from Taiwan trounced Asia Muhammed and Aldila Sutjiadi. The best match of the day was Miyu Kato and Shuai Zhang narrowly beating the third seeds Marie Bouzkova and Sara Sorribes Tormo. We also saw Shuai Zhang win her doubles semi-final last time we were at the Edgbaston tournament in 2017.

cinch Championships Tennis Tournament 2024 at Queen's Club, London

21 June 2024

After enjoying our first trip to the Queen’s Club in London in 2019 (reviewed here in June 2019), our plans to return were hampered by Covid but this Monday we made our second visit on the opening day of the cinch Championships Tennis Tournament 2024. It was a gloriously sunny day and we watched more than 8 hours of tennis on Centre Court. The best match was an upset win for the Australian player Jordan Thompson over the number 7 seed Holger Rune from Denmark in 3 sets. The match between Britain’s Cameron Norrie and Milos Raonic of Canada also went the distance with Raonic winning an epic final set tie break. This provided a thrilling finish to what was otherwise a strangely dull match with a fairly flat atmosphere. That might have been because we saw Raonic serve 47 aces, breaking the ATP Tour world record, but this made for a lot of very short points. The first match we saw was a fairly routine straight sets win for the Bulgarian number 3 seed Grigor Dimitrov over Adrian Mannarino of France. Sadly the last match of the day - a really entertaining encounter between Alejandro Tabilo of Chile and the Spanish player Alejandro Davidovich Fokina - was suspended because the courts were becoming too slippery as the evening wore on. Nevertheless we had a great day at Queen’s.

‘Tokyo Express’ by Seichō Matsumoto, translated by Jesse Kirkwood

14 June 2024

I am grateful to Jess for recommending ‘Tokyo Express’ - a Japanese detective novel by Seichō Matsumoto, first published in 1958, and translated by Jesse Kirkwood in 2022. It’s an intriguing Hitchcockian mystery set in 1950s Japan which revolves almost entirely around the careful reading of railway timetables. The puzzle faced by the police is gripping and the tale is beautifully told, with a gentle Japanese politeness. The detectives are sympathetically drawn characters and you really feel you are working with them to unpick a seemingly impossible chain of events. I did get a little confused by the Japanese place names: I should have referred more to the map of Japan while reading the book. But it’s a lovely novel.

'Joe Country', 'Slough House' and 'Bad Actors' by Mick Herron

6 June 2024

Having really enjoyed the first five of Mick Herron’s Slough House series of spy novels (all reviewed here between November 2023 and May 2024) I've now finished the final three books in the series. 'Joe Country' is a dark, violent tale that takes the slow horses to snowy Pembrokeshire (which, as everyone keeps pedantically pointing out, is in Wales). 'Slough House' is a brilliantly plotted story with a devastating sting in the tail that completely surprised me, but with hindsight was hinted at throughout the book. The final novel 'Bad Actors' is the most ambitious, with an initially confusing jump forward in time from the previous book very satisfyingly resolved by a hilarious farcical flashback set-piece. And Mick Herron is both bold enough to leave many of the key characters out of the climax to the series and indulgent enough to add a postscript chapter to bring the gang back together.

'Run' by Ann Patchett

6 June 2024

The novels of Ann Patchett have been one of my best recent discoveries. I loved 'Bel Canto' (reviewed here in December 2023) and 'State of Wonder' (reviewed here in January 2024). I've now finished reading her 2007 novel 'Run'. This is a family story about adopted children, social status and race, which reminded me of the great contemporary American novelist Anne Tyler. I've written here many times about Anne Tyler's understated masterpieces - which never stray far from Baltimore and focus almost exclusively on domestic family life but still manage to say so much about the world. Ann Patchett's 'Run' is set in Boston, Massachusetts, and the story is provoked by a traumatic accident which made me read the rest of the novel nervously awaiting further tragedy to strike. But this is mostly a gentle, thoughtful exploration of family relationships in which all the characters are lovely - often flawed but gentle, sympathetic and understanding. 'Run' is less of a thriller than the other Ann Patchett novels I have read but it's equally well written and a very heartwarming tale.

Cruise to Greece and Turkey

30 May 2024

We got back this week from an amazing cruise to Greece and Turkey on the Cunard cruise ship Queen Victoria. I had never previously been to either country and the cruise was a great way to sample a number of different places. During lockdown we got hooked on ‘Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics’ on BBC Radio 4 (reviewed here in July 2020) and it was wonderful to bring the classics to life as we visited the sites of the three of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. We are also big fans of the ‘Empire’ podcast (reviewed here in January 2023) and we were looking forward to exploring aspects of the Ottoman Empire. We had a day on the island of Rhodes, visiting the huge Palace of the Grand Masters, home of the Knights of St John until they were thrown out of Rhodes by Suleyman the Magnificent in 1552 and fled to Malta. We were astounded by the ancient city of Ephesus - one of the biggest archeological sites in the world. We visited the beautiful island of Santorini and ancient Olympia, where we walked along the running track of the original Olympic stadium. In Athens we had a great day at the Acropolis, admiring the Parthenon (which is much bigger than I had imagined). It was all very interesting and impressive and it was a beautiful day (which made for some great photos). But I think the highlight of our trip was our two days in Istanbul where we visited the Blue Mosque - an enormous domed hall with beautiful tiling and stained glass windows, quite unlike anything I'd previously seen - a real 'wow' moment. We really enjoyed the Basilica Cistern - a huge underground reservoir, built by the Romans in the 6th century AD. And the Hagia Sofia Cathedral/Mosque is an incredible building - a vast nave beneath a huge dome with golden mosaics from the original Byzantine church alongside giant circular 'medallions' containing Arabic script. The room feels enormous, dark and mysterious, like something from 'Game of Thrones'. We also walked around the Grand Bazaar - a seemingly endless maze of covered lanes of shops which was almost impossible to navigate, with each corridor looking almost identical and apparently containing the same shops. Istanbul was very different to anywhere we had been before, but not exactly in the way we had expected. The city felt busy and vibrant but not intimidating. And its history and strategic importance are fascinating.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

12 May 2024

When we last played the Grieg Piano Concerto with the Northampton Symphony Orchestra, accompanying Lucy Parham in 2007, I wrote here (in November 2007) that the piece always reminds me how nervous I was playing the exposed horn solos in the first and second movements as a teenager with the Didsbury Symphony Orchestra in 1983, accompanying Peter Donohoe, and how relieved I was this time to be leaving those solos to the NSO Principal Horn David Lack. Now that Dave is sadly no longer with us, last Saturday it was my turn again, for the first time since 1983. Our NSO concert, in. St Matthews Church in Northampton, featured the brilliant young Russian soloist, Victor Maslov. There is a wonderful video on YouTube of Victor playing the Grieg Piano Concerto 15 years ago at the age of 11: https://youtu.be/ITJZEN2B87Y?si=5ZVVXUsn_tNwSV8t The 2024 version was even more spectacular: it was a genuinely thrilling performance by one of the most exciting soloists we have accompanied in recent years. Victor seemed to be playing this most famous of concertos neither in a lush romantic style nor in a disciplined classical approach, instead managing to make it feel much more contemporary - a fascinatingly inquisitive modern take on a work that can feel over familiar - but without losing any of the passion. In contrast to my teenage self, this time I found the short horn solos really enjoyable and I was pleased with how they went. But mine was a minor contribution to an incredible performance that will live long in the memory of everyone who was there. Victor Maslov's encore, a short Prelude by Scriabin, was delicate and mesmerising. It was a challenge for the NSO to follow this in the second half of the concert but Brahms' 'Symphony No 4' is a work that deserves to stand alongside the Grieg concerto. It's a lovely piece that demonstrates how Brahms continued and developed Beethoven's symphonic style - built on meticulous syncopated rhythms, driving chord progressions and controlled power. Brahms 4 is one of my favourite symphonies. This was the first time I had played it for more than 25 years but I was surprised how well I still knew the horn parts. It's a lovely symphony, incredibly satisfying to play, in which every note feels carefully crafted. NSO conductor John Gibbons shaped a beautifully controlled performance which was incredibly moving - with Graham Tear's gorgeously measured flute solo in the last movement exemplifying this. We opened the concert with the 'Froissart Overture' by Edward Elgar and also played Laura Rossi's witty musical journey through Italy, 'Jailhouse Graffiti' which was commissioned by John Gibbons to celebrate an April Fools prank he and Laura played on the Ealing Symphony Orchestra in 2005.

'Nye' by Tim Price

10 May 2024

On Thursday we were at the Library Theatre in Leighton Buzzard to see the NTLive broadcast of ‘Nye’ by Tim Price, directed by Rufus Norris, live from the National Theatre in London. This was the 100th NTLive performance since this innovative model of broadcasting live theatre to cinemas around the world started in 2009. I think I’ve seen 34 of the 100 broadcasts which have become an artform in their own right. It’s not better or worse than being in the theatre - it’s just different. You don’t quite get the same atmosphere as being in the auditorium with the live actors, but you do get close-ups and viewing angles that you wouldn’t have in the theatre, and you can hear every word much more clearly. ‘Nye’ dramatises the life of the Labour politician Aneurin Bevan and the founding of the National Health Service. Tim Price’s play starts with Bevan (played with wide-eyed wonder by Michael Sheen) in hospital himself, being treated for the stomach cancer that will kill him, and then tells his story through flashbacks and delirious dream sequences (as the morphine kicks in) with the doctors, nurses and other patients in the hospital taking the parts of Nye’s family, friends, colleagues and political opponents. The patient dropping in and out of consciousness, reliving incidents from his life, reminded me a lot of Denis Potter’s TV masterpiece ‘The Singing Detective’: there is even a fully staged song and dance number led by Michael Sheen. Vicki Mortimer’s set constantly reminds you we are in a hospital, with beds tipped on their sides to form the desks of the Tredegar Council chamber and the green benches of the House of Commons conjured up by surgical curtains. Michael Sheen brings a fascinating mixture of naivety, passion and mischief to his Nye Bevan. He is on stage throughout, playing out scenes from various chapters of Nye’s life but always dressed in his hospital pyjamas - reminding me of Arthur Dent in ‘The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’. Sharon Small is great as Jennie Lee, Nye’s colleague and wife. Also impressive are Kezrena James, as the nurse who morphs into Nye’s sister Arianwen, and Tony Jayawardena, as the doctor who becomes Winston Churchill. But the lasting impression of ‘Nye’ is its moving tribute to the NHS and the amazing statistics projected across the stage at the end of the play which show how many lives were saved in the first few years of the new National Health Service.

'Real Tigers’, ‘Spook Street’ and ‘London Rules’ by Mick Herron

3 May 2024

I’m still working my way through Mick Herron’s Slough House series of spy novels. Having enjoyed ‘Slow Horses’ (reviewed here in November 2023) and ‘Dead Lions’ (reviewed here in January 2024) I have now raced through the next three books in the series, determined to finish reading the novels before I start to watch the ‘Slow Horses’ TV series. Book 3 ‘Real Tigers’ ratchets up both the comedy and the violence, with the Slough House team of disgraced former spies ending up in a major gun battle (and an amusing episode with a double decker London bus). Book 4 ‘Spook Street’ has the most thrilling plot so far and I think is my favourite to date. And Book 5 ‘London Rules’ is a brilliant exercise in black comedy, featuring a truly farcical political assassination. Mick Herron manages to make the books comically ridiculous while keeping the plots (just about) believable enough that you care about the outcome. And his descriptive writing, conjuring up Dickensian descriptions of contemporary London, is very impressive. I’m looking forward to reading the final three books in the series.

'Red Side Story' by Jasper Fforde

26 April 2024

Regular readers may remember that I am a big fan of Jasper Fforde’s silly comic fantasy/sci-fi novels (you can read my reviews of 14 Jasper Fforde books at: https://culturaldessert.blogspot.com/search?q=%27+by+Jasper+Fforde). Jasper Fforde’s 2009 novel ‘Shades of Grey’ (reviewed here in April 2011) is perhaps his most ambitious and complex work, depicting a post-apocalyptic dystopian society far into our future in which social standing is determined by your ability to perceive colour – with the majority of the population only able to see grey and just a privileged few families seeing yellows, greens or reds. It has taken fifteen years for the promised sequel to ‘Shades of Grey’ to arrive but ‘Red Side Story’ (which I have just finished reading as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Chris Harper and Jasper Fforde) was worth the wait. I had forgotten much of the complicated setting and plot of the first book, and I found it a little difficult to get started with its successor. But Fforde’s engaging cast of eccentric comic characters draw you in and, as I realised that ‘Red Side Story’ was going to begin to explain how its surreal future-world had come about, I was gripped. This was a much more satisfying tale where there is real jeopardy and you really care about the fate of the main characters.

'Love's Labour's Lost' by William Shakespeare

24 April 2024

Last Saturday we were at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to see the new RSC production of ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ directed by Emily Burns. I had only seen ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ once before (the 2008 RSC production that featured David Tennant as Berowne - reviewed here in October 2008). It’s not the greatest Shakespeare play but it’s interesting to see him trying out elements that would flourish more effectively in his later works. The bickering between Rosaline and Berowne, for example, feels like an early draft for Beatrice and Benedick in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’. And the shambolic performance of ‘The Pageant of the Nine Worthies’ at the end of ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ clearly points the way towards the more complete comic set-piece play-within-a-play ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ at the end of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Emily Burns’ production is lots of fun, very much played for laughs, with some brilliant comic scenes. She sets the play in the present day, at a luxury Pacific island retreat, with the men as billionaire tech bros. The supporting characters are maybe a little too close to pantomime but the four central lovestruck men and the four women who break their resolution of chastity are brilliantly played, particularly by Luke Thompson as Berowne and Ioanna Kimbook at Rosaline. The RSC is always wonderful at finding amazing young actors: 16 of this cast of 19 are in their RSC debut season. I also enjoyed Tony Gardner as the comically frustrated Holofernes (showing a touch of Basil Fawlty to Jack Bardoe’s Manuel-like Don Armado) - but, like much of the play, these scenes are brief, incidental to the plot and don’t seem to go anywhere. It was a very enjoyable, high-quality production of a play that has its limitations.

‘Behold Ye Ramblers’ by Neil Gore

19 April 2024

Last Saturday we were at The Place in Bedford to see the Townsend Theatre production of ‘Behold Ye Ramblers’, a new one-person play, written and performed by Neil Gore, which tells the story of the Clarion movement that started in the late 19th century. In 1891 the journalist Robert Blatchford founded a weekly newspaper called ‘The Clarion’ to draw attention to the conditions suffered by working people in industrialised Victorian Britain and to spread a socialist message. But from the start, Blatchford’s vision was of better support for workers, both in the factories and in their recreational and cultural activities. This led to a large network of local Clarion Cycling Clubs, Vocal Unions, Dramatic Societies, Handicrafts Clubs, ‘Cinderella Clubs’ (for children) and Rambling Clubs, which started the struggle for the right to roam freely across open moors on ancient paths. The Sheffield Clarion Ramblers, founded in 1900, is recognised as the first working class rambling club and survived until 2015. The National Clarion Cycling Club still survives today, as does the People's Theatre, Newcastle upon Tyne, which began its life in 1911 as the Newcastle Clarion Drama Club. Neil Gore’s play shows the growth of the Clarion movement through speeches, poetry,  and music hall songs, making you feel like you are at a Clarion Club meeting through lots of audience participation. He makes clever use of projections of actual Clarion newspaper pages and posters for Clarion Vocal Union concerts, together with colourised early film of working class communities. It’s a fascinating story which demonstrates the strong socialist roots of many of our everyday creativity traditions today. The tale of The Clarion reminded me a lot of ‘The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists’, so it was interesting to discover that a one-person Magic Lantern show of Robert Tressell’s classic book is going to be the next production from Townsend Theatre. https://www.townsendproductions.org.uk/shows/behold-ye-ramblers/

'American Fiction' by Cord Jefferson

10 April 2024

We first visited The Rex in Berkhamsted, described by the BBC as "possibly Britain’s most beautiful cinema", in 2008. This beautifully refurbished art deco picture house has cabaret tables and large, high-backed swivel chairs in the stalls and rows of the most comfy cinema seats with masses of legroom in the gallery. Last Saturday we were back at The Rex, for the first time in many years, to see Cord Jefferson’s Oscar-winning film ‘American Fiction’. Based on the 2001 novel Erasure by Percival Everett, the film follows Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison, an American academic (brilliantly played by Jeffrey Wright) who is increasingly frustrated as his Greek-tragedy-inspired novels are filed under ‘African-American Studies’ in bookshops because the author is Black. When publishers reject his latest manuscript for not being "Black enough", he writes an over-the-top parody of stereotypical ‘Black’ books under a pseudonym and (inevitably - and to his immense embarrassment) it becomes incredibly successful. The film is a very funny and intelligent literary satire but it's also a moving family drama with an impressive cast playing well drawn believable characters.

Ribaute, France

5 April 2024

We had a great holiday in France last week, staying in the tiny village of Ribaute on the Orbieu river in the Languedoc, close to the lovely medieval village of Lagrasse - one of Les Plus Beaux Villages de France. We were in the middle of the Corbières wine region with vast vineyards extending across the flat valley, but also just a few minutes drive from the hills to the south. One of our highlights was driving up narrow, winding mountain roads to see the spectacular Cathar castles that dominate this area. We visited the Château de Quéribus at Cucugnan - a ruin perched on a rocky outcrop at the top of a mountain with 360 degree views which looks exactly like the kind of castle a child would draw. We also saw flamingoes on the salt-water lakes at Peyriac-de-Mer and visited the Abbaye de Fontfroide - a huge former Cistercian monastery. And it was great to revisit the fairytale medieval walled city of Carcassonne (reviewed here in September 2018).

'The Motive and the Cue' by Jack Thorne

22 March 2024

In 1964 Richard Burton asked Sir John Gielgud to direct his Hamlet on Broadway - a production which set the play in a theatre rehearsal room. Two of the cast wrote books about the rehearsals and the tussles between the very different approaches of Gielgud and Burton. Those two books provided the inspiration for Jack Thorne’s new play ‘The Motive and the Cue’, directed by Sam Mendes at the National Theatre in London (which we watched at a NTLive screening at the Odeon Milton Keynes on Thursday). It’s a fascinating exploration of theatre, acting and actors, with ‘Hamlet’ and its father-son relationships providing a clever backdrop both to the relationship between Gielgud and Burton and their relationships with their own fathers. Johnny Flynn is great as the volatile Richard Burton and Mark Gatiss is very moving as Gielgud. Allan Corduner as Hume Cronyn (playing Polonius) also stood out in a large cast and Tuppence Middleton almost stole the show as a wonderful Elizabeth Taylor.

'Drop the Dead Donkey: The Reawakening' by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin

19 March 2024

When ‘Drop the Dead Donkey’ - Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin’s Channel 4 sitcom, set in the offices of a TV news channel - started in 1990 its unique selling point was the way it weaved in topical news stories (and gags about them) by recording some elements of each week’s show just before it was broadcast. Watching ‘Drop the Dead Donkey: The Reawakening’, the stage reunion of the original TV cast, at Milton Keynes Theatre last Saturday, I was pleased to see up-to-the-minute references to doctored photos of the Royal Family, the Russian presidential election etc. As a fan of the TV series, the stage show was gloriously nostalgic, with all the surviving cast members reprising their roles thirty years on (and a moving tribute at the end to David Swift and Haydn Gwynne). For anyone unfamiliar with the original series I suspect the opening scenes, punctuated by rapturous applause as each character reappeared, was probably a little tedious. But once the plot, and the mystery of why the gang had been brought back together to run a new TV news operation (‘Truth News’) started to get going, it was good fun and quickly fell back into the comic rhythms of a good sitcom. If the satire felt a little tame now, well thirty years is a long time and the news today often feels beyond parody. But it was lovely to see Susannah Doyle, Robert Duncan, Ingrid Lacey, Neil Pearson, Jeff Rawle, Stephen Tompkinson and Victoria Wicks back together again. And interesting to note that, despite the incredibly witty script, it was two brilliant moments of slapstick that got the biggest laughs.

'A Midsummer Night's Dream' by William Shakespeare

15 March 2024

When we started the Open Stages project in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2009 - working with hundreds of amateur theatre groups and professional theatre companies across the UK - it was interesting to see one question dominating the discussions at our skills-sharing sessions. What amateur theatre directors most wanted to ask the RSC was whether it is permissible to cut or amend Shakespeare's texts. It always seemed to surprise the RSC staff that they were seen as the definitive arbiters on this question: Shakespeare has been out of copyright for centuries and many RSC productions have taken extremely creative approaches to the plays. Last Saturday we were at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to see Eleanor's Rhode's new RSC production of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and I was struck by the fact that you don't need to change the text to achieve a different take on the play. In this production Duke Theseus was not the strong, authoritative leader he normally appears - an adult amongst the squabbling children. Here, played by Bally Gill (who doubles as Oberon), Theseus is a weak, nervous leader, trying to please everyone and constantly seeking affirmation from Hippolyta (Sirine Saba) - though you could imagine he might have firm views on the proper way to stack the dishwasher! This was all brilliantly conveyed through his body language and voice, without any need to change the words he spoke. It's a great production, in modern costume on a mostly bare stage, allowing the acting and the movement of the actors to dominate. In particular Mathew Baynton as Bottom, Ryan Hutton as Lysander and Rosie Sheehy as Puck demonstrate amazing physicality and balletic movement: movement director Annie-Lunette Deakin-Foster deserves much credit. Eleanor Rhode also works with an Illusion Director and Designer, John Bulleid, and his moments of conjuring and sleight of hand, sparingly used, add to the magic of the play. It's also a very funny production, with real laugh-out-loud scenes involving the lovers and the rude mechanicals. Helen Monks is brilliant as Peter Quince, almost stealing the show from Mathew Baynton: it's the first time I have seen the prologue to Pyramus and Thisbe performed as a rap! It would be impossible not to come out of the theatre smiling.

'Demon Copperhead' by Barbara Kingsolver

8 March 2024

As I have mentioned here before, I found the Hogarth Shakespeare series of books, in which contemporary novelists re-imagined Shakespeare plays, a bit cringe-worthy (with the exception of ‘Hag-Seed: The Tempest Retold’ by Margaret Atwood, reviewed here in January 2022). So, despite many people recommending it, I came to ‘Demon Copperhead’, Barbara Kingsolver’s retelling of ‘David Copperfield’ with some trepidation. But, while ‘Demon Copperhead’ (as the title signifies) is another example of a loosely disguised classic tale in a modern setting, with clever contemporary variations of the character names, I thought it worked extremely well. I think this is because Barbara Kingsolver is interested in updating both Dickens’ story and his exposé of social problems. Her first-person narrator Damon Fields tells the story of his difficult childhood in Lee County, Virginia, in the 1990s. He is born to a drug-using teenage single mother in a trailer, passes in and out of foster care and experiences trauma and tragedy at a very young age. In front of this bleak backdrop, Barbara Kingsolver paints an engaging cast of Dickensian characters to create what feels like it is going to be an entertaining coming of age story about overcoming adversity through friendship. But Kingsolver’s underlying theme is America’s opioid crisis and seeing Demon (and most of his contemporaries) descending into over reliance on drugs and addiction feels painfully real and distressing. ‘Demon Copperhead’ is a brilliantly written novel: it is a tribute to Kingsolver’s skill that you soon forget the Dickens parallel and get sucked into the modern tragedy of a generation lost to drugs. The second half of the novel becomes increasingly uncomfortable reading but it is a compelling commentary on a shameful episode in our recent history of which Charles Dickens would have been proud.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

5 March 2024

Last Saturday I played in a Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert which featured a rare performance of the First Symphony by Sir Arnold Bax. The early 20th century English composer was a committed Hibernophile, passionate about Ireland, Irish culture and the Gaelic language. He wrote poetry in Gaelic and named his children Dermot and Maeve. Bax was deeply affected by the 1916 Easter Rising and the execution of Irish rebel leaders by the British Army, but felt unable to speak out as he was then Master of the King's Music. His 'Symphony No 1', completed in 1922, while not publicly connected to the events in Ireland, reflects his anger and grief. As a programmatic work about the armed suppression of protest and rebellion it made for a fascinating comparison with our performance last year of Shostakovich's 'Symphony No 11:The Year 1905' (reviewed here in June 2023) and the 'Peterloo Overture' by Malcolm Arnold (reviewed here in October 2019). Bax's First Symphony is scored for a massive orchestra, including hecklephone (bass oboe), sarrusophone (or contrabassoon), bass flute and two harps. It's a brutal, angry piece, punctuated by some surprising moments of gentle beauty. It took me some weeks of practice to begin to appreciate the music but it really grew on me and I thought we gave a impressively coherent and moving performance of the symphony. Our concert also featured the 'Violin Concerto No 2' by Prokofiev - a stunning performance by Joo Yeo Sir. Both Bax and Prokofiev went out of copyright on 1 January 2024 so I suspect there will be more performances of works by both composers this year. We opened the concert with Bernstein's 'Symphonic Dances from West Side Story' - last performed by the Northampton Symphony Orchestra in 2008 (reviewed here in March 2008). 'West Side Story' is a challenge for any orchestra - both because of its complex syncopated jazz and Latin rhythms, and because it is so well known. As we settled our nerves, took a deep breath and launched into the opening bars, conductor John Gibbons immediately halted the performance and dashed off stage, having forgotten to bring with him the police whistle whose shrill blast halts the Jets and Sharks at the end of the Prologue. Amused and relaxed by this intrusion, the orchestra started again and gave an exciting and slick account of Bernstein's score - featuring a brilliant percussion section, amazing work by Terry Mayo on trumpet and a beautifully controlled flute cadenza by Graham Tear, providing a haunting moment of stillness after the mayhem. It was a wonderful concert, enthusiastically received by a sold out audience at Christchurch, Northampton.

'Vanya' by Anton Chekhov, adapted by Simon Stephens

29 February 2024

‘Uncle Vanya’ has been my favourite Anton Chekhov play since I saw ‘Vanya on 42nd Street’ - Louis Malle’s brilliant 1994 film which shows André Gregory directing a performance of the play in an empty New York theatre. I also liked Michael Blakemore’s film ‘Country Life’ - an excellent adaptation of ‘Uncle Vanya’ starring Sam Neill and Greta Scacchi, set in Australia just after the end of World War I, which coincidentally also came out in 1994. Last Saturday we were at the Curzon Cinema at Milton Keynes Gallery to see the NT Live recording of ‘Vanya’, Simon Stephens’ new adaptation of the play, recorded at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End. This is an incredible one-person performance of the play by Andrew Scott. Like Jodie Comer’s amazing performance in Suzi Miller’s 'Prima Facie' (reviewed here in August 2022), Andrew Scott commands the stage, and our attention, without a break - playing all the characters. But whereas in 'Prima Facie' Jodie Comer was playing a young barrister recounting her story and re-enacting scenes and conversations, in ‘Vanya’ Andrew Scott is simply performing the play as all the characters, with no need for any framing device. At first this feels more like a radio play as he quickly switches voices in conversations with himself. But his physical performance is as important to how he tells the story. While he doesn’t use any different costumes or hats to distinguish the different characters, his stature, posture and gestures instantly make it clear who he is playing. And seeing his performance on the cinema screen, the close-ups allow us to see a different character emerging simply through a subtle change in his eyes and facial expressions. Simon Stephens has moved the story from Russia to modern-day Ireland and the setting works well. Andrew Scott gives Alexander and Helena Northern Irish and English accents respectively, emphasising that they are the outsiders in this family. There’s a lot of comedy in this tragedy and Scott is very entertaining, but some of the more poignant moments felt a little unemotional without reactions from other actors. One really effective touch was the piano - on stage throughout for Ivan occasionally to tinkle a few notes - which turns out to be an automated player piano, conjuring up Ivan’s dead sister Anna who he recalls playing duets with: seeing the piano keys moving on their own suddenly created the sense of another person on stage to break (or merely to emphasise) the loneliness of this solitary performance.

‘Cahokia Jazz’ by Francis Spufford

23 February 2024

I came to Francis Spufford’s third novel, ‘Cahokia Jazz’, having really enjoyed his debut novel ‘Golden Hill’ (reviewed here in August 2017) and its successor ‘Light Perpetual’ (reviewed here in July 2021). ‘Cahokia Jazz’ (which I read as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Andy Ingalls) is another shift of period and style from Spufford - a noir crime tale echoing Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, set in 1920s America. But this is an alternative reality America - a parallel universe in which the fictional midwest city of Cahokia is dominated by a First Nations people who are led by a hereditary monarchy and have embraced a version of European catholicism. The book starts with police officers investigating a murder and has all the tropes of a gumshoe detective story. But the racial and religious backdrop to the mystery - drawn in fastidious detail - creates a deeply unnerving mood. When, towards the end of the novel, one of the characters suggests that they are all living in a dream and none of this is real, it feels cathartically believable: the whole novel has a dreamlike quality. Francis Spufford’s writing is beautiful and he creates an extensive cast of well-drawn, sympathetic characters. The detective partners Drummond and Barrow - one short and talkative, the other huge and taciturn - reminded me of George and Lennie in John Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’. And the American period setting of ‘Cahokia Jazz’ made me think of 'The Lincoln Highway' by Amor Towles (reviewed here in February 2022). ‘Cahokia Jazz’ is not quite as satisfying a novel as ‘Golden Hill’ but it’s another fascinating period drama from Francis Spufford and I look forward to seeing which genre he chooses to tackle next.

‘Baraaim Ed-Louz’ by Koum Tara

16 February 2024

I have been enjoying ‘Baraaim Ed-Louz’, the new album by the French band Koum Tara, which explores chaabi - a traditional music of Algeria. Chaabi means 'of the people' and typically consists of Arabic/Berber vocals, set against violins and mandolins, a piano melody and percussion beats. Koum Tara take chaabi as the starting point for a fusion of North African and Western sounds, drawing on jazz and cinematic orchestral strings. The result is a gentle, laid-back blend which is an interesting contrast to the pulsing beats of Algerian rai music, made more popular across Europe by singers such as Cheb Khaled, Faudel and Rachid Taha, ‘Baraaim Ed-Louz’,is a lovely album: here is a sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXKlGtOOppc

'Bumper Blyton: Improvised Adventures For Grown-Ups'

9 February 2024

On Saturday we were at the Quarry Theatre in Bedford to see 'Bumper Blyton: Improvised Adventures For Grown-Ups'. Using the model of the long-running improv show ‘Austentatious’ (reviewed here in August 2012) which invents a ‘lost’ Jane Austen novel based on audience suggestions at every performance, ‘Bumper Blyton’ does the same thing with Enid Blyton. But, whereas Jane Austen wrote six completed novels, Enid Blyton published 762 books, which provides fertile ground for exploring her style and genre - and rekindling childhood memories for most of the audience. On our way into the theatre we were handed small schoolroom slates on which we were asked to draw something symbolising a childhood hobby or activity. The cast then examined our chalk pictures to choose several elements to weave into their improvised story. It was all very silly and extremely funny. The many surreal flights of fancy made it feel more like a radio comedy show than a stage play, reminding me of Mark Evans’ stage adaptation of his BBC Radio 4 Dickens parody 'Bleak Expectations' (reviewed here in August 2023). ‘Bumper Blyton’ is clearly aimed at adults, and was not afraid to acknowledge the more questionable aspects of Enid Blyton’s work. Using adults to play young children without disguising the fact they are obviously adults (like Dennis Potter’s ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ - reviewed here in June 2013) also provides opportunities for considerably more innuendo than I remember from reading Enid Blyton as a child. ‘Bumper Blyton’ was great fun and ‘jolly japes’. And as they said at the end: “if you enjoyed the show, please come to see it again: it’s improvised so it’s completely different every night - and if you didn’t enjoy the show, please come to see it again: it’s improvised so it’s completely different every night!”